


thy dark lord, thy dark lady

by sweetdreamsaremadeoffish



Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Genre: A Whole Lot of YIKES, Abuse, Dark, Dark Dark, F/F, In Which Shit Hits the Fan, Like, general nastiness, idk y'all it's just a whole mess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-21
Updated: 2020-01-20
Packaged: 2020-10-25 03:43:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20717534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetdreamsaremadeoffish/pseuds/sweetdreamsaremadeoffish
Summary: She witnessed the crown--the one she'd coveted since the beginning--shatter at His will, as He declares Himself sole proprietor of Hell for all eternity. The roles of prophet, herald, queen, did not serve Him, so He did away with them all. The demon aristocracy was in shambles, Hell in chaos, as He crushed their history in His hands and nullified any social stature of birth, wisdom, or honor. The Pit became the roiling, violent void humans imagine, every semblance of order dashed to pieces like broken glass.





	1. am i not?

**Author's Note:**

> I have nothing to say for myself.

Objectively speaking, they were fucked.

Even losing Eden wasn't so fast and furious. Lilith was no stranger to loss, but she hadn't known hope in a very long time, and the breakneck pace of its rise and fall left her head spinning.

He tempered his plan, favoring subtlety over apocalyptic drama. Hell's hordes would not overrun Earth, but the Church of Night was devastatingly destitute. Particularly the Spellmans.

Ambrose disappeared after the masquerade marass. He was on the run from the Council, a fugitive from Witch Law for the murder of the Anti-Pope.

Sabrina was _mortal_. Dubbed unworthy of her infernal blood during His test, the Mephisto Waltz. Lilith watched Him cast His daughter down, in the likeness of the False God all those eons ago. Left stripped of her powers and protection, the girl huddled under Hilda’s wing. Her aunt was terrified, with a house full of broken witches, but she never showed even a shadow of a shudder.

Hildegard was not faint of heart. In fact, far from it.

Lilith admired her strength, though she knew the woman would falter. They always did.

And He always wins.

She witnessed the crown--the one she'd coveted since the beginning--shatter at His will, as He declares Himself sole proprietor of Hell for all eternity. The roles of prophet, herald, queen, did not serve Him, so He did away with them all. The demon aristocracy was in shambles, Hell in chaos, as He crushed their history in His hands and nullified any social stature of birth, wisdom, or honor. The Pit became the roiling, violent void humans imagine, every semblance of order dashed to pieces like broken glass.

Lilith was relatively safe within the castle walls. She'd belatedly won their wager over the girl’s nature, and He granted her a small, incensed mercy: Her life.

Apparently, her insight and skepticism were virtues as it pleased Him.

She was alone, encased in cold stone. And she had no news regarding what became of Zelda Spellman.

Her dear, sweet Zelda. She took lovers before, witches, mortals, and demons alike, more out of boredom than anything else, but Zelda was always different. There was a pull between them, the purest, most innocent thing she knew. Not to say it was a clean, chaste entanglement. Quite the opposite, but the feeling that flew inside her lungs when they were together was the one thing she was certain was true.

It was over as suddenly as it began. Faster, actually, since she’d been laying the groundwork for this takeover for over a century, first with Edward, then his daughter. They stood together, unmasked and armed with every defensive enchantment in their arsenals, and then she was gone, banished below the crust of Zelda’s world, tethers cut without warning. She watched over the remains of the Greendale coven in her Hall of Mirrors, kept infernal eyes on Hilda, Sabrina, and Ambrose, but no matter how she searched, Zelda eluded her hellish gaze.

Renewed power allowed Him His old form, appearing almost human but for the twin scars He wore like armor on His shoulders. She seemed to be the only one who could see through it. Maybe that was why she was sequestered there: She was the only creature who saw this face warp beyond recognition or return, the only citizen of Hell to know the truth. He wanted to begin anew, and she was the anchor to His past He had all but severed.

He groped greedily at her hips, but she felt claws instead of fingertips. There was nothing soft or human about the way He clutched her like a helpless mouse caught in an eagle’s talons.

He grinned, and it turned her stomach sharply. And then His hot breath was in her ear, branding her with burning words.

"I have a surprise for you, Lilith." God of mischief, the dark and sinister, His new world was already on the tip of His tongue.

"A surprise, my Lord?" She knew the game, knew the stakes.

"Indeed, my dear."

But that didn't mean she ever won.

Demons weren't crafted with compassion, nor engineered to intuit, but, for some reason, be it the thick tone of His voice or the trickster's haze in His eyes, there was a faint twinge at the base of Lilith's stomach when He went to retrieve her mysterious gift. Like the scent of the air before a storm.

Her chamber's doors creaked on their hinges, as He insisted upon opening them both for such a grand gesture.

He glided across the sleek, obsidian floor, a thick chain in his palm.

Eons of practiced control kept her quiet upon seeing the chain's other end and what was attached to it.

Utterly bare, soft flesh bruised and bloody, shackled and tear-stained.

Zelda.

Sweet _darling_ Zelda was bound to His will, cuffed at her slender wrists and ankles with rust and shame. Her eyes were closed.

"With your fondness for her, Lilith, I thought you'd like to have such a tender, succulent pet, but you don't seem terribly grateful. Perhaps I'll keep her as one of my own…"

She bit her lip, gaze held low in a show of submission, searching Zelda's crumpled body for the whisper of a breath. "Thank you, my Lord. You are a most merciful, generous king."

"That's better," he purred. "If memory deserves, you women haven't the stomachs to tame your beasts-" Ah, yes, because the half-dead witch was the beast between them. "I would be glad to break her in for you."

The stronger the spirit, the more pleasure he took in breaking it.

Zelda whimpered, suddenly spread wide open and mounted to the sheet of the cold wall.

"That won't be necessary, Dark Lord," Lilith supplied. "I will take great pleasure in it, surely."

He stalked to the wall, sniffing Zelda's shoulder lazily. "As you wish, my dear. I'll leave you to it, then."

The illusion flickered, and His demonic teeth sank into the witch's porcelain neck in a violent farewell. Before Lilith could blink, He had dissolved into nothing.


	2. fire when i walk into you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im so sorry i just needed something to break my slump

Lilith ran, the distance stretching between heartbeats, a tumbling corridor as her vision narrowed.

Blood ran too, raspberry wine spilling over Zelda’s white silk skin. The witch hardly trembled, so weak already.

Lilith’s hands spidered over Zelda’s bonds, wrenching her free with wild, panicked magic.

Her curls were caught in the crimson tide, more red than ever now, and the waves crashed across Lilith’s back as she lowered her from her place, pinned like a butterfly to the wall. Lilith knelt, laying Zelda in her lap and muttering a healing spell under her shallow breath, first for the pain, then the ravaged wound, and finally for the witch’s chaffed and blistered body. He had bitten through her shoulder blade, so she stitched it back into one with a watchful eye and steady hands.

As she waited for the knitting of her flesh, the bolstering of her bones, Lilith hummed softly and stroked Zelda’s matted hair, soothing once her work was done.

He’d cut into her so easily, and it reminded Lilith of an old myth she’d read from the shelves of Baxter High’s library. The gods had shaped men and women with clay from the riverbank and taught the newly moulded mortals the ways of the world.

She wondered what witches were made of.

Zelda coughed. A wet, choking cough, but a thin gasp left her with just relief in her lungs.

“Zelda?” Hands hovering over her battered frame, Lilith’s voice shook with the gossamer curtains, wavering in the gentle breeze from the open windows. She slipped the bleached pillow of Zelda’s cheek into her palm, softly, so softly. Leached of that sweet peach glow Lilith loved so, the witch’s head lolled limp against her hip, sobbing feebly, soaking her robes in blood, sweat, and tears. Each heave of her chest rattled and seared through like a rogue spear.

“Li- Lil-ith?” she rasped.

The demoness hushed her with a tender finger to her chapped, crackling lips. A flick of her wrist and the windows snapped shut, Zelda floating through the chill of the chamber to Lilith’s cold bed. Blankets swept over her rawed figure, and Lilith wavered above like a small child’s storyteller, smoothing burns and bruises.

How long had she been in His grasp? How long had she suffered? Questions and fury blistered Lilith’s tongue, but she tamed herself for Zelda’s sake.

Wildfire could wait.

Hours, days passed, blending together like violent paint on paper. Lilith did not leave her lover’s bedside, escaping audience and suspicion. When nights in Hell grew frigid, she wrapped herself around Zelda’s fitful frame and kept her warm with her lit-coal heart, fighting back tears at her slight sleeping wheezes.

Zelda woke in Lilith’s arms on the seventh day wholly healed. Ever vigilant, Lilith caught the flutter of her lashes, stirring under her skin, and a soft cry flew forth. Covers whipped and whirled, and Zelda was across the room, hands outstretched in defense, magic pulsing fiercely in the air, bare feet slick on the glassy floor.

“Zelda,” Lilith whispered, falling into loving step, following along. Zelda hissed a warning, and she froze. “What’s wrong?”

“Don’t come any closer.” Her spell and voice were shaking. “Stay right where you are.”

“It’s alright, Zelda, it’s just me. You’re safe,” Lilith murmured low, proper and patient.

“Where is He?” The witch spurned her soothing, glancing about warily.

“He’s gone. Don’t worry, I won’t let Him hurt you.”

Zelda fell out of her casting stance, imperious with one trim brow arched, and suddenly Lilith knew fear. “So you're going to do it instead?” 

“What?!” Of all the things she might have expected… “No. Of course not, I-” She was afraid to understand, to see. “Zelda, who do you think I am?”

“You're the Mother of Demons,” Zelda growled, thrumming, shivering to her core. “Satan's right hand, his concubine. Mistress of Darkness. First among women.”

She stared, mute until- “I'm just me with you. Just Lilith.”

Zelda bit her lip, defeat written in her eyes as she slumped into the corner. “There’s no such thing.” Diamond tears dusted her lashes. “You're legend. Bedtime stories. Power and sex and magic and danger personified.” More incensed as she went on, the walls around her began to rattle, fractures swimming through the sable stone. “You are a celestial, endless, boundless creature with a heart of Darkness that I have feared, envied, and _adored_ since I was a child. You’re memory and Hellfire.” Zelda sighed, hope lost. “‘Just Lilith’ is still an immortal terror.”

Lilith shook her head, coming to kneel before her and taking her hands. Zelda succumbed, letting the tip of Lilith’s nose to come close, softly brushing her own.

“Will you trust me anyway? Will you let me protect you until I can help you home?”

“What else can I say, Lilith?” Zelda’s heavy head crumbled to her chest, and Lilith held her together in ribbons. “Yes.”

They melted together, puddled in satin and skin until light broke red over their interwoven waters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yes it's a crap chapter what about it?
> 
> (jk i love y'all)


	3. like lovers do

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

He took the court hunting. Women, of course, were not invited to mount the hounds or patrol the realm’s border, and left to herself, Lilith brought Zelda to the armory. 

“Your first lesson,” she said, hefting a crossbow into Zelda’s grip and aiding her aim from behind. “Is never, under any circumstances, are you to speak when He comes to my chambers.” She swallowed thickly as their joined hands drew back. “No matter what He says or does to me, you _must_ stay quiet.”

Zelda turned in her arms and the nocked arrow flew unbidden from her, lodging itself in the wall of blades. “What?”

Lilith placed another and steadied her with eyes ahead. “You’ll be hidden if ever He arrives and glamoured with wounds should He chance to see you.” She set herself in iron, gritting her teeth. “He won’t lay a filthy claw on you, but I can’t promise you’ll be shielded from everything. He does as He pleases with me, _when_ it pleases Him, and I won’t always know soon enough to spare you from it.”

“Lilith-!”

“Hush now, concentrate.” This time the arrow buried the target shabti, and she smiled. “It’s been this way for centuries, Zelda, since long before you were born. Or any Spellman. It is what it is.”

The witch broke from her. “That’s not enough! How can you expect me to just stand by and let Him-”

Lilith embraced her, tracing sweetly up the back of her neck. “I expect you to put yourself, your _safety_ first. I can handle Him, it’s you I’m worried about.”

Zelda held her tighter. “Then how can you ask me not to worry about you?”

“Let’s look at swords,” Lilith offered, drifting toward the racks of iron and rust. “Or maybe a mace?”

“Lilith, stop trying to distract me.”

She let her shoulders fall. “Please, Zelda. You promised to let me protect you. I can take care of myself.”

“I know that.” And she did. Truly.

“Good.” She blessed her with a firm, adoring kiss. “Now, how do you feel about holy steam grenades?”

Zelda cursed her traitorously human lungs.

The air in hell was rancid, burning to her, and, unaccustomed to breathing brimstone, she was so sick she could hardly get out of their newly shared bed. Lilith hovered like mist at her edges and always on the edge of weeping. She’d already come too close to losing for comfort, and she could not abide it again.

In the dead of night, while Zelda slept, fitful and frail, Lilith slipped from beneath the sheets, a parting kiss easing her lover’s feverish forehead and promising a swift return. She crept on tip-toe through the dark, into the Great Hall. His banquet torches were extinguished by thin-winged babes, horned imitations of Aphrodite’s children with deadlier shots.

Nectar and ambrosia were strewn, spilled careless across the table. Gathering the scraps surreptitiously into her full skirts, Lilith followed the lines of shadow through the empty halls, casting odd glances over her shoulders to catch the eyes she felt at her back along the way to her chambers. But there were no flecks of light to find, no loose tails to tear from the rafters, no gargoyle spies or worming trails.

“Zelda,” she called softly, bolting her doors behind. “Zelda, wake up.”

Sweating through her skin, mottled and muffled, Zelda stirred, and Lilith was beside her before two breaths passed between them. Her lips cracked with dryness when they parted for her to speak, but Lilith quieted her with a cupped palmful of a god’s elixir to her mouth.

Zelda lapped it up, exhausted and obedient, and nibbled numbly at the honeycombs of ambrosia Lilith pressed to her tongue crumb by crumb, a necessary risk, a necessary evil. “Good girl.”

**Lil_ith_**.

_Fuck_.

Zelda bit the fingertip between her teeth at His voice’s nearby echo, and Lilith bled into her.

**Come to me**. 

Green eyes went wild and watered with fear. Lilith kissed her quickly, rearranging bedding as she went, whispering. “I’ll be back before you know it. Go back to sleep.”

**And bring your pretty Spellman pet along**.

**Now**.

They were definitely fucked.

“Did you really think I wouldn’t find out, Lilith?” He snarled. There was no space to breathe in the throne room, shadow looming over them from His exalted height, and she kept herself balanced on the tightrope line from His feet to Zelda shaking against her.

“She belongs to me.” She felt Zelda’s fists at her spine, tugging her heartstrings tight with pride and that dangerous streak of tenderness.

“Be that as it may, you are _mine_. Therefore, she must also be.” She hated Him, and a vision of her hands around His damned throat bubbled to the surface of her incensed mind. “Dirty thieves are unworthy of such gifts, Lilith. This is your chance to give her over to me willingly. ”

“And if I refuse?”

He smirked. “Oh, you know what happens when you refuse me.”

True enough. She steeled herself, bracing for a fight.

“Wait.” Zelda squeezed her hand in letting go and stepping forward, right into his line of fire.

“Zelda, what the heaven do you think you’re doing?” Lilith hissed, grasping at the space her lover’s wrist had been a moment prior as she floated further away.

“I want to make a deal,” the witch said, voice falsely calm.

“Oh?” He never could resist a bargain. “And what would you ask of me, witch? Your life?”

“Yes, that.” Zelda nodded, and Lilith found her feet charmed to stone. She’d caught his attention with daring. “And Lilith. I want Lilith. If I win, I get to take her home with me. And you let us go in peace the moment it’s over and never trouble us again.”

“And if you lose, she'll end her days with me. As my prisoner. And the two of you will never walk the same realm again.”

Zelda held out her hand to seal their terms, and He took it.

Lilith watched their eyes lock and knew He was inside Zelda’s head. They remained so for a long time. Too long. Then Zelda cried out in pain, crumpling, and she thrust her hands urgent and out of control at her groundings in vain.

“No!” But Zelda’s tears were black tracks down her cheeks, burst as Lilith broke free. She pulled Zelda to her, muttering protections and preventions over her again and again before meeting His gleeful gaze with unbridled flame.

“What now, Lilith?” He purred, all too satisfied with Himself. And pride made him vulnerable to another attack.

“Let her go, unharmed, and I’ll bow to you willingly. I won’t fight back. I won’t escape. I won’t even try. Just let her go.”

“Why should I?” He growled, a beast again.

“I’ll be at your mercy until the end of time. I’ll give over my body, my mind, everything. If you let. Her. _Go_.”

He hummed over it, considering and contemplative. Finally, Zelda’s breathing leveling under her hands, He lifted from thought. “Alright,” he shrugged. “I’m feeling generous tonight. So mote it be, my dear.”

“Lilith. Lilith, n-” Zelda forced protest from Lilith’s lap, but the demoness hushed her with a solemn kiss.

“I love you, Zelda.”

With a razor-edged snap of His fingers, she was gone. And Lilith was enchained.

“Now, Lilith.” He crouched and grabbed her chin, rough and royal. “Let’s play a game.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh


	4. hurt me once (epilogue)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two updates in one day? Madness.

Funnily enough, she happened to do it on Zelda’s birthday. It took her longer though, to fight through each barrier between Hell and Earth, and she kept the image of his severed, bloodied, scalped head staining his throne, his body staining the bed alight in her mind’s eye all along the way.

The mortuary’s drive was lined in black vehicles tip to tail when she arrived under their lamp-post. In amongst the crowd of funeral guests climbing the porch stairs, Lilith spotted Hilda and her incubus beau, his hair significantly more salt than pepper. She bobbed and weaved between mortals and witches alike, dashing to Hilda’s side and pulling her into a tight hug.

“Lilith?” Hilda voice was bewildered and garbled from crying into Dr. Cerberus’ chest, his cape draped protectively over her trembling shoulders. When they drew apart, Lilith smiled, nodding.

“It’s good to see you, Hilda. You can’t imagine what I’ve been through to get here.” She scanned the mass indoors, no tell-tale red hair in sight just yet. “Would you happen to know where to find your sister?”

The couple shared a look.

“She’s…” Hilda began, biting her lip.

“She’s inside,” Dr. Cerberus answered, more stable and sure.

“Thank you.” Lilith beamed, kissing Hilda’s hand as she let herself be swept into the current of mourners. 

Inside, young Ambrose Spellman rushed to embrace her on sight, dark eyes red with weeping. His arms were too tight around her, but she responded in kind, happy to lose a bit of breathing to such a warm welcome. While they were entangled, something whined at her ankles, bumping against them insistently and looking down earned her big, pitiful puppy dog eyes from Vinegar Tom.

_Vinegar Tom_?

But he’d died decades ago. 1989, if she recalled correctly. She looked to Ambrose for an explanation.

“Auntie Zee revived him when she came home from Hell,” he sniffed, squatting to ruffle Tom’s velvet ears. “Something shifted in her power after that. Something infernal.”

She nearly blazed with the delight of possibility. “I’d quite like to see _that_. Would you point me in her direction?”

He stared for a quiet moment before pointing toward the large gathering in the parlor: the wake.

Lilith left him with a fond kiss atop his head and held back from running to Zelda’s side. Instead, she adopted graceful posture and slipped into the stream of grieving humans, finding some oddly familiar from absent-minded glances. Down the center aisle, she saw the sleek black casket.

And a portrait she recognized.

Some unearthly sound dropped from her mouth, reaching the image in a few wide strides, ghosting fingers to the curve of the jaw.

Zelda’s jaw.

_Zelda’s jaw_?

And Zelda’s lips and Zelda’s nose and Zelda’s eyes and Zelda’s knuckles, her neck, her wrists, her ears, her rose-golden curls, her love, and Lilith’s quaking hands knocked Zelda to the carpet.

Her ears were ringing, and she needed to sit down, but her knees locked where her ankles were weak, and she fell. Her skull crunched against the hard floor. It flew into her like a barrage of bullets.

_And the two of you will never walk the same realm again_, he’d said.

“Look who finally decided to show up.” Sabrina. Sabrina, above her, in and out of focus amidst dancing blackness threatening to drown her. “She never stopped believing you’d come back,” the girl spat. “She waited _centuries_ for you, she scratched the gates of Hell raw. And now’s when you finally drag your ass up here? Now that she’s dead.”

“Sabrina!” Hilda, now, chiding her niece, who was sobbing through her fury.

“No, she deserves it!” she raged. “You deserve it after everything you put her through.”

Lilith curled in on herself tight enough to stand, wobbling, palms poised over the coffin to shove it away with an errant spell.

And there she was. Zelda, with her painted face, encased in satin and, soon, soil. “No.” She leaned down beside her, softly praying to nothing for a fairytale miracle, the true love’s kiss from the storybook she’d read to the twins all those ages ago.

Nothing. Zelda’s beautiful eyes stayed closed, and Lilith’s heart felt nothing. And everything.

With one touch, clear sight flashed before her, Zelda’s soul bound in Hell, torn to tatters by harpies and heathens of the Pit.

He got His apocalypse after all.

**Author's Note:**

> yipe i'm sorry i don't know what's going on.


End file.
